


Private and Public

by pinebluffvariant



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Gen, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:25:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5055640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinebluffvariant/pseuds/pinebluffvariant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody knew her real name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Private and Public

_Dr. Scully,_ her patients called like hungry chicks, over and over all day long. _Dana,_ her mother began on the phone, _oh Dana, are you okay?_ There it was, the usual separation of the private and the public, marked by conventional use of names, of titles. Respect and intimacy, deference and closeness, encoded in repeated two-syllable words. _Doctor Scully_ in public, _Dana_ in private. Never mom. A _Ms. Scully_ sometimes when she was not wearing her coat and badge, the signs of her profession.

Nobody knew her real name.

 _Scully._ It jarred her, at first. She’d been _Scully_ at the academy, the near-militaristic regimen of physical activity necessitating a shorthand between the trainees and the trainers. Last names were distant, efficient. So she was _Scully_ on the obstacle course, during the sprint, the simulated hostage situation.

Then one day, she put on her best suit, shouldered her mother’s finest leather bag, and pressed B for basement. _Agent Mulder_ , she’d said. _Scully_ , he’d replied. He never stopped saying it since, never stopped tapping his tongue against his teeth for the ‘L’. He hissed the ‘S’ ever so slightly. He never stopped.

The public and private shifted, tilted, topsy turvy like their ever more improbable lives.

He called her _Dana_ once, when her father died. She was leering and he tried conventional intimacy, a friendly touch, a reassuring word. It didn’t fit them.

 _Scully, run_ , he hissed behind the barrel of a gun.

She tried to get custody of a daughter she’d never known she had. He sat next to her, thrumming with energy and ready for a fight. He talked about _Dana_ and her strength and fitness as a parent, as a woman, but only to others. _Scully_ , he said and put his hand on her shoulder as they looked inside the coffin.

A man sat on her couch, poured her wine and flirted and called her _Dana_. It wasn’t him. She should have known.

A man sat in an interrogation room and said, _Agent Scully is already in love_. A wave of arousal coursed through her body. She felt no shame. Agent Scully was already in love.

 _Scully,_ he murmured in the darkness of his bedroom as she knelt down beside his pillow. She thought she’d been quiet. _Scully,_ he murmured again against her lips for the first time.

In the cab on the way back from a California al fresco dinner on the company dime, he leaned over and slipped his fingers under the hem of her dress. A little higher. A little more. He met bare skin and looked at her, wide-eyed. _Scully…,_ he breathed.

 _Scully, I have to go,_ he whispered in the pre-dawn haze one morning. She’d slept an hour. He handed her the baby and got in the shower.

 _Dearest Dana_ , he wrote. _I’m lonely, Dana,_ he wrote. _You’re breaking my heart_ , she thought. _Write my name,_ she thought.

She wanted to test out the porch swing. Yes, test it out. _Scully, Scully, Scully, you naughty doctor,_ he teased as his lips worked their way up her thighs, under her sundress.

 _…you, Dana,_ the judge instructed. _I take you, Scully-,_ he said and winked at her through a weak sheen of tears, hers or his, she wasn't sure. They checked. It was still legal.

She started the engine and backed out of the driveway, suitcases rattling around in the trunk. His voice echoed in the distance.  _Scully, no, please don’t._ Yes. Right now, yes, she would.

Another man called her _Dana_ , called her beautiful, called her intelligence blinding and her bones fine as china. All she wanted to hear was: _Nobody likes a math geek, Scully. It’s not a weather balloon, Scully. This is attested across world languages and mythologies, Scully. I want you, Scully. Come home with me, Scully. Scully, I have something to ask you. Scully, please. Scully, yes. Oh, yeah, Scully, yeah._

Nobody knew her name. She’d spent too long lying about herself. She had become a persona, a carefully crafted fiction.

Her phone was heavy in her pocket, with promises of lips and tongue caressing her private name. Trying it on for size again, for fit. Slipping it into her, around her, flooding her.

She closed her eyes and dialed.


End file.
